Kesko Sales increase in July

For Kesko's food trade, sales in July were €336.0 million, an increase of 0.4% compared to the previous year.

For home and speciality goods trade, sales in July were €114.6 million, a decrease of 5.1% compared to the previous year. 

For building and home improvement trade, sales in July were €231.4 million, an increase of 6.2%. Sales in Finland were up by 6.4%. Sales abroad increased by 6.0% in terms of euros and by 8.9% in terms of local currencies 

For car and machinery trade, sales in July were €108.6 million, showing an increase of 46.2%.

China High-speed Train Slow Down

According to the train crash in Wenzhou, China decided to slow down the speed of the  hIgh speed train.

China's 2rd-biggest train maker recall 54 bullet trains for safety reasons, the latest blow to the country's scandal-plagued rail system.

Among the travelers were many who seemed to have resigned themselves to putting aside fresh doubts in the country's accident-prone rail system because of the train's convenience

Flights between China's two premier cities, while priced higher, have dismal records for on-time arrival. Tickets for the high-speed trains, which run several times during the day, can be purchased minutes before departure.

Among the 16 quiet and air-conditioned cars, most with as many full seats, people with doctorate degrees sat next to heavy machinery repairmen and sales service professionals returning from business trips, a far cry from China's less glamorous train rides in smoky, standing room-only cars.

Kuka System Solution

When leading beverage companies want to streamline retail distribution, they turn to KUKA Systems to design and install integrated pallet-building lines that provide a major increase in throughput over manual operations. KUKA Systems recently deployed one such layer palletizing and case picking line for one of North America's leading beverage companies, helping lower overall supply chain costs. Such a setup permits beverage makers to move completed order pallets from a large regional distribution center directly to major retail outlets, shortening the distribution pathway. Previously, these pallets had been assembled manually at smaller, often overburdened local warehouses, which is time- and labor-intensive.
The recently deployed system can process 5,000 cases per hour. It features KUKA Systems' automated high speed layer-picking system as well as its layer-forming and mixed palletizing cell. Handling of the highest demand products - approximately 65% of the customer order volume assembled at that regional center - is fully automated. That cell features KUKA Systems' state-of-the-art layer pick head on a robot arm that lifts cases from underneath, reducing the risk of product damage associated with traditional robot- or gantry-mounted grippers that use clamps or vacuum technology to grab cases from the top or sides.
KUKA Systems Corp North America, a Michigan-based company, is part of the KUKA Systems Group of Augsburg, Germany, a leading global supplier of flexible automation systems for the logistics, automotive, aerospace, energy and industrial machinery solutionssectors with more than 3500 employees worldwide. The company is a world leader in automated picking and palletizing systems and logistics for warehouses and distribution centers. Its fields of competence include end-of-line palletizing, depalletizing, mixed product palletizing, and engineering and consulting services in connection with overall warehouse and distribution center storage and order fulfillment generation.

(source: http://www.reuters.com)

ThyssenKrupp Profit Foracast

Germany's biggest steelmaker ThyssenKrupp is expected to unveil continuing growth in third-quarter underlying profit on brisk demand from carmakers.
Also ThyssenKrupp makes submarines, elevators and chemical plant and other machinery, Analysts expect the steelmaker will confirm its full-year target of about 2 billion euros.
Carmakers are ramping up output in Germany, thanks to a voracious appetite for luxury cars in China and other emerging markets, giving ThyssenKrupp's bread-and-butter carbon steel business the pricing power to fully pass on higher raw material costs.
Germany's economic recovery has been chugging along nicely since the industrialised world emerged from recession and while recent data showed that the growth surge is losing momentum, its mechanical engineering sector stills enjoy booming export orders.

Japan Core Machinery Rise

Japan's core machinery orders rose 7.7 percent in June from the previous month, up for the 

second straight month, in a sign corporate capital spending will pick up pace as the economy

 recovers from a slump caused by the devastating earthquake in March.

The rise in core orders, a highly volatile data series regarded as an indicator of capital spending 

in the coming six to nine months, was much bigger than the median market forecast for a 1.8 

percent increase.

Manufacturers surveyed by the Cabinet Office forecast that core orders, which exclude those 

for ships and machinery at electric power firms, will rise 0.9 percent in July-September from

 the previous quarter.      

Lincoln Electric and Torchmate

Lincoln Electric Holding announced today acquiring substantially all of the assets of Applied Robotics, the leading manufacturer of CNC cutting tables and accessories in North America.

 
Torchmate offers a wide selection of CNC plasma and oxyfuel cutting tables and systems to small and medium- sized fabricators. The company's trailing twelve months of sales are approximately $13 million, and Torchmate currently employs 44 people.

Lincoln Electric is the global leader in the design, development and manufacture of arc welding products, oxyfue cutting machinery.www.herostart.com. ,and has a leading global position in the brazing and soldering alloys market.

Iraq Industrial Bank Capital

Years of war and sanctions have left many of Iraq's factories idled, lacking government support and unable to compete against a flood of cheap imports into the oil-reliant country.

The hike will raise the bank's capital to 150 billion dinars and be allocated from the 2012 budget, according to a statement from deputy prime minister for economic issues, Ross Nouri Shawis.

Iraq's private banking sector is also very limited and dominated by two major state-run banks. Iraq has signed oil deals with large companies to build up its production but still needs investment in virtually every other industry, like machinery industry.